Sigoa Lv 1VIII (Ragn 19)/2 — ef ‘if’
(Þat) skal þriggja nátta
(ef þik tregar, móðir)
— leið eigu vér langa —
leiðangr búinn verða.
Skal Uppsölum eigi,
þó at ófafé bjóði,
ef oss duga eggjar,
Eysteinn konungr ráða.
Leiðangr skal verða búinn þriggja nátta, ef þat tregar þik, móðir; eigu vér langa leið. Eysteinn konungr skal eigi ráða Uppsölum, þó at bjóði ófafé, ef eggjar duga oss.
An expedition will be prepared within three nights, if that is what is causing you grief, mother; we have a long way to go. King Eysteinn will not rule Uppsala, though he may offer excessive payment, if sword-blades serve us well.
notes
[1, 2, 4] leiðangr skal verða búinn …, ef þat tregar þik ‘an expedition will be prepared …, if that is what is causing you grief’: The present reading ef þat tregar þik follows Hb 1892-6, Skj B, and Ragn 1906-8, 208 (cf. also Ragn 1944 and 2003), as far as assumed prose order and essential meaning are concerned. Kock (NN §§2369, 2811) objects to this reading on the twofold grounds that it is unacceptable for a subordinate clause to enclose a main clause, and for the conj. introducing the subordinate clause (here ef) to follow the main clause. He emends þat to þá, taking þá ‘then’ as introducing the main clause correlatively with ef (‘if you are worried, then an expedition … will be prepared’). Neither of his objections applies fully in the present case, however, since the main clause continues and concludes in l. 4, and is neither enclosed by the subordinate clause nor followed by the conj. ef introducing it. In dispensing by emendation with þat, which he takes as the nom. subject of tregar in Finnur Jónsson’s reading (in Skj B; it is also how Olsen reads it, Ragn 1906-08, 208, cf. 203, here following Finnur Jónsson in Hb 1892-6), Kock sees trega here as a subjectless, impersonal verb, and allies it with Nygaard’s list of such verbs (NS §88 Anm. 4). Þat, which is formally the same in the nom. and the acc., may indeed be the nom. subject of tregar, as Finnur and Olsen seem to assume; on the other hand, the verb tregar may equally well be impersonal, as Kock suggests, though with þat as well as þik in the acc. case, and þik functioning as ‘logical subject’ (cf. Stefán Einarsson 1945, 169-70).